


Incorrigible

by Jenwryn



Category: Death Note
Genre: Alternate Universe, Fluff, Humor, M/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-01-27
Updated: 2009-01-27
Packaged: 2017-10-02 06:38:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jenwryn/pseuds/Jenwryn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>L sent Light out on an impossible mission... and now Light is Not Amused.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Incorrigible

**Author's Note:**

> Written as a birthday present for the utterly lovely IceQueenRex. ♥
> 
> Inexplicable AU is inexplicable.
> 
> Unbeta'd.

_Maybe then we already are home._

 

~ Alexi Murdoch.

 

*

 

“You have to understand, L,” explained Light quickly, and loathed every ounce of apology that seemed to have weevilled its way into his voice, completely without his permission, “that I did my very best. But, well, if you insist on putting stupid parameters on things, then this is what's going to happen.” He tugged his rain-soaked jacket off, hung it on a chair close to the heater (but not too close), in the, probably vain, hope that he might manage to avoid a trip to the Dry Cleaner's, and then motioned at the bags he'd dumped on the coffee table. “You could at least put the groceries away for me, seeing as most of it's for you anyway.”

 

L stared up at Light, from where he was seated on the sofa, his knees drawn tightly to his chest, and his expression dangerous. Ignoring Light's suggestion that he might actually lift a finger around the place (not that the younger man hadn't known it was a waste of perfectly good breath before he'd even said it), the detective frowned. “Clearly Light-kun did _not _do his very best, if this is the end result.”

Light felt his shoulders sag, just a little bit. It had been a long day, their current case was being a real bitch (not that dead ends didn't have a certain appeal, but it had reached the point where new leads had become about as likely as a soda-pop stand in the middle of the Sahara), and he'd just spent a ridiculous quantity of hours walking around in the wind and the rain and the Tokyo traffic – the last thing he needed was an argument with his boyfriend, just to top it all off.

Not that that stopped Light from making the consecutive decision that he was feeling cranky rather than apologetic, and therefore let his expression shift into a scowl. “I _said _that I tried,” he sniped, and it barely sounded petulant at all. Really.

L's eyes brightened. “Are we going to argue?” he inquired eagerly, as though the mere thought lifted his spirits no end.

Which, admittedly, it probably did.

Light glared at the older man, and plonked himself down on the lounge chair, clothes still dripping, just so that he didn't have to _look _at the infuriating detective for a moment longer. He snatched a newspaper out of one of the shopping bags, shook it out, and started, ostensibly, to read it. It was a completely absurd thing to do, and he knew it, but he was damned if he was going to stand up again right now. “No,” he snapped, from behind his flimsy paper fortress, “we are _not _going to argue, because I _refuse _to indulge your childish behaviour any longer today. I said I did my best, so get over it already. Besides, you get off on fighting me – don't think I don't know it – and Ill be damned if I'm letting you dislocate my nose again for your enjoyment.”

“Hmmm,” mumbled L, his attention already diverted by the project of inspecting the contents of the shopping bags. (The shopping bags, Light rather thought, which really ought never have been put on the coffee table, seeing as they were beginning to droop in a sad kind of way, and had been dripping rivulets of rainwater onto the paperwork beneath them since the moment he'd put them down.) “I'll concede,” said L from amongst the noise of lids being opened, “that I am, on occasion, childish. However, I am_ not_ the one sulking amongst the entertainment pages.”

“_Not_ the entertainment pages,” growled Light, and tried to tell his brain that the image before him was _actually _an in-depth explanation about the connection between the Yen and the U.S. Dow Jones Industrials Average.

His brain wasn't believing a word of it.

“Are so,” countered L, his head now almost out of sight in a plastic bag (dammit, didn't he know _anything _about common sense and the need to breathe?), a plastic bag which Light knew full well had the strawberries in it. Presumably he was eating them straight from the carton, if the rattled of plastic and the contented munching sounds were anything to go by. “I know you are. You get this _look _in your eyes every time there's a picture of Hideki Ryuga within a two-metre radius of you. Your sister isn't the only one who likes to perve at idols, Light-kun.”

Light felt his cheeks warm up, told himself that it was anger rather than embarrassment, snapped out something along the lines of _what the hell you can't even see my damned eyes, L_, then realised that that really wasn't doing him any favours, and changed mid-sentence to, “Anyway, I'm not sulking! And even if I were, it would be your fault! This is what happens why you make stupid demands like this – I'm not Watari, you know, I can't just jump on a super-powered jet and bring you things from overseas, or something – and peaches just aren't in season at the moment! The few that I found looked really terrible – cold storage, really, I think – and you said nothing tinned, so what could I do?”

L withdrew his head from the plastic bag (and that was _definitely _a strawberry-coloured fleck at the corner of his mouth; didn't he know _anything _about washing fruit before he ate it?), then hmmm-ed his way into a different one. “Aha!” he exclaimed a second or two later, clearly ignoring every single word that Light had just said. “Light-kun did manage to purchase the cream, at least!”

Light pulled his newspaper higher, with a rather haughty huff, and made use of the opportunity to turn a few pages as well, just in case L decided to look.

“It's hard to make peaches and cream without the peaches, though,” the detective was musing. Then, with a bright little movement, he rose onto his knees and peeped positively _coyly _over the top of Light's newspaper. “If I were to apologise for making Light-kun walk in the rain to no avail,” he asked, “would he allow me to...?”

The enthusiastic manner with which L was waving the can of whipped cream around, and the rather particular glow his face had adopted, left Light in no doubt as to exactly what the mop-haired man was hoping he might be allowed to do with it.

“You are _incorrigible_,” Light muttered, in what he hoped was a properly disgusted tone of voice, although he rather suspected that his eyes were probably betraying him, seeing as he was pretty sure he'd just caught himself giving L and appraising glance and, if he'd noticed it, then L definitely had, damn him and his never-letting-things-pass-beneath-the-radar-ness. “I am _not_,” the younger man continued, shaking the pages of his paper firmly, and trying to ignore the fact that the rain-drenched status of his trousers and sleeves was starting to make the paper somewhat soggy (not to mention was it was probably doing to the sofa), “turning your dinner into foreplay – we've had this discussion before, L.”

He'd also been completely ignored multiple times, too, and had had a great deal of fun because of it, but he wasn't going to mention that right now.

The detective put his time-honoured sad-panda-expression™ to work.

Light hated it with a vengeance.

Primarily because it always worked.

After some annoyingly long moments of feeling _absurdly _like a puppy-kicker, Light sighed. He folded the damp newspaper back up, rose to his feet, and picked up the shopping bags which would, realistically, stay there until they turned into space dust, if L were left with the responsibility of actually dealing with them. “Look,” the Japanese man said, with another sigh for good measure. “Clearly you're not going to do anything about it, so I need to put these groceries away. If – and this is a large _if –_ you actually get off your backside and go and run a bath for me – and I mean a nice bath, with the bubbles how I like them, and the right temperature – and then, only then, if you also don't complain about how long it _takes _me to enjoy said bath... then I'll bake you something nice to eat with the cream. What do you think?”

L grinned up at him from behind his thumb. “I think I'm very lucky that my boyfriend is so marvellously well-trained and so remarkably domestic.”

Light snorted, on his way to the kitchen. “Not half so lucky as you are that your boyfriend suffers from serendipitous bouts of both _utterly _inexplicable affection, and selective deafness, let me tell you.”  
   
The shopping seemed somehow heavier than it had when he'd brought it home, and he rather seriously regrettedhaving sat around in wet clothes like a prize-winning idiot; he was starting to ache all over. He opened and shut cupboards, and listened to the welcome sound of water running, just audible through the various doors that L must have left open _en route. _

Light had just finished placing the strawberries carefully in the refrigerator, when L crept up behind him, wrapped his arms around Light's waist, and snuggled his head in against the younger man's neck.

“I also think,” continued L, as if the conversation had merely lulled rather than ended, “that if we were to bath _together_, I would be much less likely to complain about how long the process lasted.”

There were days when Light really wondered just how it was that he'd ended up like this – empty grocery bags at his feet, and his hair plastered down against his face, and an extremely-frequently-infuriating man clinging to his body as if he were last connection to life itself. But, on the other hand, as he gave up, and leant back against L, and into the kisses that were being brushed along his jaw, and the hands that had crept up the front of his uncomfortably-damp shirt, tugging him backwards and closer still into the detective's embrace... well, in moments like this, Light supposed that it didn't really take a genius to work out the answer to his never-asked question, to be completely honest.

“I love you, you annoying bastard,” he grumbled, then turned in L's embrace, and made the kisses a mutual activity.

And L just grinned when they parted to breathe, grabbed his hand, and pulled him towards the bathroom...


End file.
